Avid Technology names Greenfield as chairman, CEO

Avid Technology announced Dec. 19 that Gary Greenfield has been named chairman of the board and chief executive officer.

Greenfield succeeds Nancy Hawthorne, who has served as interim CEO since Aug. 1 and will assume the role of lead director on the company’s board.

Greenfield has been CEO of GXS since 2003, a worldwide provider of business-to-business integration, synchronization and collaboration solutions. Since December 2003, he also has been an operating partner with Francisco Partners, a leading technology-focused private equity firm.

Avid today announced that its Board of Directors appointed Louis Hernandez as president and chief executive officer, effective today. Mr. Hernandez succeeds former president and chief executive officer Gary Greenfield, who will remain on Avid’s Board of Directors. Mr. Hernandez has been a member of the Avid Board since 2008. Most recently, Hernadez was also Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Open Solutions, Inc., a technology provider to financial institutions worldwide, which was acquired in January 2013 by Fiserv, Inc.

The past five years have been hard on many previously dominant equipment vendors serving the broadcast industry, but none have felt the dramatic shifts in HD editing technology offerings as much as Tewksbury, Mass.-based Avid. Once a pioneer in nonlinear editing, the company fell victim in recent years to its own dominant status and watched helplessly as new players like Apple and Adobe Systems began to gain ground with TV news, reality TV and long-form program editors.